Chapter 17
I’d been gone almost ten months when I went back to Jen and Celia.
Jen’s sister had been renting out my room, and they were happy to boot her.
Apparently, she ate everyone’s snacks and vacuumed loudly in the middle of the night.
She had a cat, who also left when she did. I kept finding traces of its hair.
I worked from our uneven kitchen table, translating Mr. Pichietti’s rambling thoughts about lawn care into packaged bits of content he could send to former customers at variable intervals.
The job didn’t pay much, but it also didn’t take up too much of my time, so in my off hours I trawled for production gigs.
Much as it grieved me to admit it, I liked working in television.
The pace, the excitement, the fact that, if you weren’t stuck logging, every day was something new.
If I could get a gig somewhere niche, like Antiques Roadshow, I wouldn’t have to be manipulating people or building up somebody’s ego.
I avoided anything that hinged its drama on making cast members look stupid.
This cut me out of the majority of Reality TV.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have any contacts in scripted production, and everyone I knew in Reality was game to talk to me until I said I’d worked on Honeymoon Stage.
I could see it in their eyes, the moment they realized I was that PA.
Lauren had been right: My big opportunity had come and gone.
Dan had let me take the fall once I left the show, and I was now the PA who had brought legal scrutiny down on the network.
It was easy to put all the blame for the accident on me, however untrue their claims that my negligence had led Sally Ann to eat the peanuts.
They didn’t really care that someone had died.
As I’d been told, people died all the time!
But production companies couldn’t risk a lawsuit, and therefore, they couldn’t hire me.
The announcement came in the trades that Honeymoon Stage was not being renewed, which anyone with a pulse could have figured out, given the public divorce its two romantic leads were facing. I took this as a reason to go visit Lauren, whose baby, I regret to say, looked exactly like Dan.
He was fourteen months old and just going down for a nap.
Lauren let me admire him for a minute before putting him to bed.
I didn’t ask about the financial situation that allowed Lauren to keep on as an on-set producer while single-parenting a baby.
Honeymoon Stage had done well, and I supposed some part of that had ended up in Lauren’s pocket. It certainly had not graced mine.
Lauren lived in West Hollywood, in a 1920s-style bungalow with a gorgeous back patio and a remodeled kitchen that she likely never used. She thanked me for the little stuffed duck I had picked up for the baby on the way over.
We sat outside. A concrete wall covered in vines hid any noise from the freeway. “So,” she said to me. “The drama.”
“With the show, you mean?” I asked.
“I told you you’d regret walking out.” She’d made us each a Nespresso, which was too strong for me.
“I don’t regret it,” I said quickly.
“You do—otherwise you wouldn’t be here with me.
” Lauren took her coffee down in a single shot.
Steam still rose from mine, and I imagined her throat burning.
“It’s been very juicy. You’d have loved it.
Those two hated each other by the end. They’d say ‘Stop rolling,’ and Dan would have to remind them that if we stopped rolling we wouldn’t have a show. ”
She was wrong that I’d take pleasure in Jason and Maggie’s collapse.
Lauren was always so sure we were alike in our ruthlessness.
Given my trajectory, I wasn’t sure why. “It would have been such good TV if they had listened to me,” she continued.
“The network, I mean. Mark my words, we’re going to start seeing more real-life soap operas.
People yelling at each other. That’s the next wave.
That’s what people want, if they can’t have a love story.
Crying, screaming, knocking over tables.
An all-out brawl between Jason and Maggie would have been television magic. ”
“Why didn’t the network listen?” I asked. “Why didn’t it happen?”
“Too many people on Maggie’s team are caught up in preserving her image.
Clearly it’s already shot to hell, but they put someone in to make sure we were editing her the way we’d promised.
A lesson to keep the cast and their teams out of production, at least if you want something sensational.
Though they were both totally polite and restrained while we were at the house.
It’s not like we caught them saying anything we couldn’t use.
I tried to get in the room during their couples therapy, but my hands were tied, you know. ” She frowned.
“Why’d she leave him?” I asked. “Do you think?”
“Sounds like a good friend finally talked some sense into her. Unfortunately for us. We couldn’t keep business as usual once they so clearly couldn’t stand each other, but at least we could have finished a full season.”
“You really think they couldn’t stand each other?” I asked.
“Cassidy.” Lauren snorted. “The second she became a bigger deal than he was, that marriage was over. The man’s ego bruised like a fruit.”
“And the thing I told you, the day I quit. About Maggie . . . ?”
“Being a murderer?” Lauren rolled her eyes. “You want me to get laughed off the lot? Nothing good will come of stirring that old pot. Poking around in that accident. Especially not for you.”
We sat quietly for a minute or two, Lauren’s mind whirring, me building up the courage to ask her to help me find work.
“So what are you going to do now?” I asked finally.
“Oh, Dan and I have a development deal with the network. A few irons in the fire.” It seemed to me she didn’t need Dan, that Maggie breaking away might have been an inspiration for Lauren to do the same.
But I supposed there were only so many men she was willing to sleep with.
She had a kid. It didn’t matter how good her ideas were or how much better she was than Dan at managing a set.
Lauren out from under the protection of Dan’s maleness would probably follow the same fate as Maggie.
She’d be cast as a striver, a slut. What an awful industry I was trying to go back to.
“Do you know of anybody interesting hiring right now?” I asked. The industry was awful, but I still wanted in. I was addicted to the speed of it, the power.
Lauren laughed out loud. “I knew it,” she said.
“I knew that’s why you were here. I see through you completely, Cassidy Baum.
” She said this as if she was simply delighted that, despite what might have happened with Honeymoon Stage, my urge to get on set was still alive and well.
“We’re not anywhere near green lit yet,” she said. “But once we need PAs, I’ll call you.”
“Not with you and Dan, I mean.” I tried to keep the disdain from my voice. “Maybe something less intense?”
Lauren laughed again. “It’s dog eat dog out there,” she said. “Me and Dan might be all you can get.”
I should have known I would run into Gabe eventually.
Every city is just a small town, once you’ve lived in it long enough.
Lauren’s baby woke up, and I left her house feeling like I’d prostrated myself for no reason.
Going back to my car was like returning to the first square of a game board, getting stuck in Gumdrop Gulch, or whatever it was called, after thinking I had made it to the lollipops.
Not too far from Lauren’s was a coffee shop I liked, and to cheer myself up, I went to get myself a treat.
It didn’t occur to me until I saw him that the reason I knew and liked that coffee shop was that it was around the corner from Gabe’s studio.
There he was, waiting at the counter for his order.
The world was dog eat dog but also fairly predictable.
Gabe turned around at the tinkle of the bell on top of the door. Our most recent interaction was the drunken voicemail he’d left me nine months ago, of which I had never acknowledged receipt. His hair was shorter. He had on a shirt that I knew well. My stomach dropped.
We looked at each other from across the coffee shop, unsure who should speak first. I gave him a weird little half wave, my arm barely leaving my side. He smiled. There were those dimples.
I could sense him there, the nearness of his body, as we both waited for the person in front of me to finish their order. When it was my turn, I panicked and ordered some expensive froufrou drink I didn’t actually want.
“With whipped cream?” asked the barista.
“Sure, why not.”
By the time I made it over to where Gabe was standing waiting for his coffee, all I could think about was the birthmark on his thigh, the arch of his back, the particular velvet softness of him.
“Hey, Cass,” he said. I almost melted. Had his eyes always been so blue? It took everything in me not to reach out to run a finger across the stubble on his jaw.
“Hey,” I said. “This is a good coffee shop, huh?”
“It is.” He swallowed. I wondered if he also was fighting the attraction. What was it about his body that so perfectly attuned to mine? “How’ve you been?” He held a sugar packet, turning it over and over between his fingers.
“Oh, you know,” I said. Terrible. Why did we break up again? Because a desperate pop star told me you had orchestrated murder? Ridiculous, standing here with Gabe, to remember Maggie claiming he had been involved in all that stuff with Sally Ann. “You?”
One side of Gabe’s upper lip curled. He looked me directly in the eye. He was about to say something when the barista called out “Gabriel!” He blinked.
“Your coffee is ready,” I said.
“Tea,” he corrected. He took the cup from the counter and threw away the sugar packet unopened. Never had I wanted to kiss someone so badly.